


Double Vision

by Gryphonrhi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 04:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: Steve Rogers learned his guilt-trip glare from his mother.  It can have interesting effects.





	Double Vision

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s note:** this is an odd mash-up of MCU and comics canon because honestly… Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame can all die in a fire. Better those movies than the characters, and characterizations, we love.

Later, Steve thought it probably started with the exploding Doombot. He was never certain, even with Jarvis’ help, but… yeah. He thought things had gone weird after the Doombot that charged him had turned into a mass of metal shards and oddly colored lights around the edges of his shield.

It was the first time he saw himself, anyway.

His old self, to be precise: too small, too damn thin, and visibly powered by the rage of living in a society with goals and ideals and people who still couldn’t be bothered to be _kind_ to each other. Steve froze for maybe a tenth of a second – too long in the middle of mass combat, long enough that Clint called to him. Just his name, a status check from a friend, but it helped freeze that instant in his memory so that later Steve was sure of what he’d seen: his former self. The reflection he still half-expected to see in mirrors even now.

Oddly, his other self froze for a moment, too. Those eyes locked on Steve and for all his familiarity with his own body, his own face (one of the few things he’d had to sketch for too many sick days), in that moment Steve had no idea what his counterpart was thinking.

Then another Doombot brought down part of a building’s façade with a little help from gravity. Cement fragments flew everywhere, and Steve glared at the stranger, suddenly sure it wasn’t him because he’d be _fucking helping the injured to safety_.

The guy’s face abruptly flushed with color, looking healthier than Steve had ever felt at that size. He moved, then, got a shoulder under the injured man’s arm and started helping him to an alley that would be less Doombot-filled than the main street and less of a kill box than a store.

Steve turned back to the fight, back to angles and tactics, rescues and retrievals, and forgot about the encounter in the chaos. They were busy stopping a mass of robots from demolishing more of Trieste’s historic Old City than his war had and it was important to him, maybe, but not to the job at hand.

He only remembered later, when Hulk was almost done hammering and twisting robots together for Trieste to melt down and sell for scrap. They’d need help to fund some of the repairs even with any rare earths in the ‘bots. (Tony had already confiscated four to look over, but he’d been unimpressed by most of the design so far, judging by his tone and insults.)

Clint dropped down by Steve, his own report already succinctly dictated for their records and marked off on Steve’s mental to-do list. Clint had a bottle of wine in each hand, bow over one shoulder and quiver on the opposite hip. Before Steve could razz him about hogging the good stuff, Clint handed over an open bottle of wine. “Wiry little guy handed some to me, said we’d earned a good drink. What happened at the bank corner?”

Steve blinked and then frowned. “You know how they say everyone has a double?”

Clint shrugged and took a swig of his own wine. “Yeah, but I’d have noticed two of you, Cap.”

Steve huffed a laugh, sniffed at the drink, then shrugged and drank straight from the bottle, the way he would have with the Commandos. It was tart and smooth, full of scents and flavors he’d never noticed before Project Rebirth. It also washed the dust and smoke out of his mouth. He was almost tempted to try breathing it, even though he knew that wouldn’t go nearly as well. “Point taken. No, just… for a second I thought I saw myself. The old me, Clint, the little guy. It was just odd. He looked so thin and pale. I mean, yeah, that’s what I looked like, but I’m not used to seeing that as much anymore.”

He looked up to see Clint studying him the way he scoped out a target. “You’re shaken. He looked that much like you?”

“You didn’t see him?” Now Steve was surprised. “You saw me freeze. He was right in front of me, by those three bankers – it was after that Doombot blew up in the weird pink and purple sparkles with those green-white tinges.”

“I remember that one. Scott and I were trading Easter Egg jokes about it.” Clint considered it, then shook his head. “If he was that small, yeah, you blocked my view of him. Jarvis should have the footage from your cowl. We’ll check it on the way back, or he can check now?”

Steve tapped his cowl. “Jarvis, do you have a minute with some processing capacity?” He knew how much Jarvis did for Tony; it always seemed polite to ask.

“Of course, Captain, if it’s not a complex analysis.”

Steve shrugged and gave the time and place in question and asked, “Did I see myself?”

Jarvis actually paused for a brief instant to unpack that and analyze, then sounded surprised as he said, “It certainly looks as if you did, although there are also odd shadow images around him that I would call particle refraction of the light if they were also occurring around your bankers. I do not know precisely what happened, Captain, but your eyes were correct: that is a 100% match to the pictures I have of you from before Project Rebirth. With,” he added dryly, because anyone around Tony so much developed serious sass, “fewer bruises than your pictures of the time sport. And lighter circles under the eyes.”

Steve grinned. “Oh, so he’s an _improvement_. Got it.” He leaned back and drank more of the wine, savoring the flavor as much as the part where it was liquid after a fight, and then said thoughtfully. “Does he show up again in our footage?”

“That, I’m afraid, is more processing than I have time for just now – Sir and I are dissecting how the ‘Doombots’ ” – his disdain was epic, on a scale with Peggy about army intelligence – “work together and take direction.”

“That’ll be useful when this happens again,” Steve agreed immediately. “Back-burner my question, Jarvis, and thanks.”

“Most welcome.” He clicked off the comm audibly, one of his small courtesies, and Steve looked at Clint.

“A random weird. Maybe.”

Clint nodded. “Maybe. I’ll mention it to Tasha.” He tilted his bottle up, finishing it, and said, “Let’s go find her, by the way. Find some food, haul some back for Tony and the big guy, find some more liquid, see if they want us to glad-hand or vanish.”

Steve nodded, drank the last of his wine, and stood up with him. “You find the food and update the rest of the team. I’ll go see which way the mayor wants us to do this.”

Clint grinned at him. “Thanks for taking the hard job.” He headed off at a jog, eyes scanning the area. Steve knew damn well what he was looking for and appreciated it, even if he didn’t expect any results.

Just as well he didn’t. Not then, anyway.

~ * ~ * ~

Not even a week later, Natasha and Wanda waved Steve over to a coffee shop near Avengers Tower that Wanda liked. (She said their chocolate tasted almost right; two of the baristas were still taking that as a personal challenge and still not admitting where or when Wanda had become so important to them.) Steve nodded to them, stood in line to order the berry/ginger/protein powder smoothie that he and Pietro lived on some weeks and a plate of whatever pastries weren’t selling well, then went back out to the patio to see what his teammates had to tell him.

Wanda waited until the food and drink arrived to flex her fingers in an odd, non-random motion that didn’t quite make her hands glow. The street sounds around them dimmed before she said quietly, “I saw a double yesterday.”

“Here?” Steve took another bite of the ham and cheese croissant; they might need energy if this was a problem. He paused. “ ‘A’ double. Not ‘the’?”

“Outside the Tower,” Wanda said quietly. “And not your double, Steve. Mine. She looked as I did when I was still a teenager in Europe, before…. Before.” She twisted her hand, palm up, and let red light dance across her fingertips and vanish again. “More oddly, she looked at _me_. Caught my eye, smiled, and vanished into a bodega before I could get across the street.”

Natasha took up the story to let Wanda sip her chocolate. “The double returned a lady’s purse, Steve. Handed it over, wouldn’t stay to be thanked, and vanished out the door again.”

“And I didn’t see her when she left,” Wanda said, still puzzled by it. “I went in through that door within half a minute of her leaving. She wasn’t there. There was just an odd after-breeze.”

Steve frowned, both at the data and how off-center Wanda seemed. “What kind of odd?”

“Like Pietro running by, only with a scent of… I don’t know.” She frowned, hunting for the right words or maybe the right memories. “Not new wind, not concrete dust, not sweat, not ozone, not incense, but a little of all of that, and under and around all of it, something or someplace wild.”

Natasha looked at her. “That gets more thorough, and more odd, every time you try to describe it again. And Jarvis has the footage from Wanda’s sunglasses, by the way. He says this doppelganger had the same odd refractions yours did.” Her voice was dry and amused and not worried yet. “I think he just doesn’t want to use the term ‘sparkle vampires’ for fear Tony’d hear about it somehow.”

Wanda smiled. “Tony would be insufferable if he thought Jarvis had read those.” She shrugged. “I don’t think we’re in danger. I don’t think she – it?” she wondered, eyes gone distant for a moment, “—is a threat. Although perhaps it was meant as one.” She frowned, then shrugged and looked across the table. “To me, this feels like some odd blessing, Steve.”

Natasha shrugged as much with her lips as her shoulders. “Well, you know the difference between a blessing and a curse, don’t you?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah – who it’s aimed at.” He shrugged. “She vanished in front of you – both of you?” he asked. Natasha nodded. “Okay. If someone could get away from you two, they’re good. We’ll find them again when they want us to.” He glanced at Wanda, aware she sometimes had answers she didn’t know she knew. “Just the one, you think?”

She looked up from the crumbs that had been a raspberry scone a few minutes before, then nodded. “Yes. I have no good reason as to why, but I think so.”

Steve shrugged. “One’s easier than several, so let’s hope so. Okay. It’s caught my eye and now yours. Maybe it wants us to see it. Hope so; that’d give us a better chance of figuring out what it’s doing. So we watch for it, listen for odd stories. See if one of us shows up somewhere we weren’t.”

Natasha nodded and stole his last oatmeal raisin cookie to go with the last of her tea. “I’ll set up some alerts. Between us, Clint, Jarvis, and I can filter for where we actually were and which sightings aren’t us.”

“Set up the alerts for all of the Avengers,” Steve said. “Not just the ones who were on the Trieste job.”

Natasha gave him a sidelong look and a quirk of her mouth. “Of course, fearless leader. Now. What’s this about you took _Barton’s_ advice on wine?”

Steve grinned. “I didn’t. I took the advice of a grateful man who used Clint as a courier.”

Wanda giggled and, almost incidentally, dropped her ring of silence around them as Natasha asked, “Mmm. How’d that work out for you?”

“Pretty well, thanks. And don’t tell me you didn’t drink it, too. It smelled just like that dark zinfandel you and Pepper keep handing me, and I know Clint didn’t give me an entire bottle without getting you _something_...”

~ * ~ * ~

Three days after that, Pietro came in from a morning run around the five boroughs – he needed to stretch; Steve liked hearing how the other area heroes were doing – and simply said, “It is a very odd thing to see yourself when it’s not a mirror. Are there any pancakes left?”

Steve got up from reading the news, leaving his tablet on the table by his coffee, and went to mix up more batter. “There can be, sure. What was he doing?”

Pietro looked puzzled. “Helping with crowd control at a protest. That particularly annoying group that can’t read the Bible—”

“That’s a lot of them,” Steve said, resigned, then his eyes narrowed. “Ah, hell. The ‘God hates’ bastards?”

“Them, yes.” Pietro grinned and got the last of the pomegranate juice. “Or it was. Their signs all say love now. It was very amusing. Also, they kept reaching for the counter-protesters and finding their hands full of used markers, or empty spray paint cans, or fallen leaves. I left some money with the poor police sergeant handling the crowd, in case anyone reports stolen paint. She said she’d drop any change in the precinct’s charitable fund.”

Steve chuckled. “That does sound like a good morning. You sure it wasn’t you?”

“I didn’t think of it in time.” He gave Steve a wicked smile. “And you’d have scolded me about their freedom of speech while trying to frown and hurting your mouth not smiling.”

Steve didn’t try to deny it. “Did you tell Jarvis?”

“Of course. He says it’s the same frequencies of light refractions.”

Steve tossed him an energy bar. “Pancakes coming up.” The first rounds were cooking before he asked, “Did the double look like you look now, or when you were younger?”

Pietro glanced up, smile gone and eyes uneasy. “He was in the same outfit I’m wearing now, Steve, and had this on.” He lifted his hand to show a temporary tattoo that hadn’t been there the night before.

Steve made a mental note that the foyer security guard’s daughter had come into work with him again this morning. “Yeah. That’d be odd, all right.”

Pietro poured coffee for both them and said simply, “I don’t know if it would have been odder to have seen myself as a teen, as Wanda did. But when I first saw him and realized he had a rose too… it felt like someone had walked over my grave.” He smiled a little. “Until he started repainting signs faster than anyone else could see, at least. Then it was mostly funny.”

Steve looked up, startled enough to almost let the pancakes burn. “Wait. He had your speed?”

Pietro shook his head, then considered it more carefully. He finally said, “No, not as fast as I am, or Northstar. But faster than you.”

Steve added that to the puzzle pieces and passed over the first batch of pancakes. “Great. Jarvis, you heard?”

“I did, yes. Although, unlike you, Pietro, I believe that your impersonator was… cheating, I suppose.”

Pietro looked up at the ceiling, unworried by how much syrup poured onto his pancakes. “Cheating how, Jarvis? I saw him.”

“Almost a film trick, I would say. He seems to skip between several spaces on his route rather than exist in each successive point. I am starting to think the shimmer has something to do with his form of movement.”

Pietro was busy devouring his pancakes; he just shrugged. Steve sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Why do I hear another ‘science versus magic’ lecture coming in?”

Jarvis said sympathetically, “I do give it rather high odds, Captain.”

“Do what I do.” Pietro smirked. “Flee. Or get earbuds.”

“I’ll remember that in Avengers meetings.” Steve grinned at him when the threat registered and kept making more pancakes. Someone would eat them.

~ * ~ * ~

The sightings turned into daily occurrences after that. Steve was the original more often than not – now updated to his current appearance – but the other Avengers were being copied too.

Steve got credit for helping people get things from upper shelves in bodegas, for encouraging kids out sketching in diners and museums, and cheering on other runners in Prospect Park. One social media post said he’d spent half an hour listening intently to an old man who wanted to relive glory days in WWII and who’d exhausted the ears of his family already. (The family was grateful for someone else at all, much less another vet, much less Captain America.) All Steve could think was that at least his double was doing things he could approve of.

The puzzling part was that the others felt much the same way.

Natasha caught a glimpse of herself doing half-speed releves in Central Park while talking seriously to a group of girls. She was using proper form, but the double vanished before Natasha could get there. The ballerinas all looked up, startled, and wanted to know how she’d teleported _and_ changed clothes so fast; they thought Natasha could teach them for performances. They also promised that no, they’d be really careful about their turn-out and rolling up to pointe properly, not bouncing up to it.

Tony came in muttering about, “At least he was encouraging them, but if you don’t understand rocket engines, you need to say so, not just nod your head when the kids are about to use too much power for the fuselage’s tensile strength.” He kept grinning at odd moments after that, however, and the smudges on his hands needed his lab soap to get off.

Sam returned from visiting his mother in Harlem with the news that someone who looked like him had been in an impromptu dance-off and the rotten bastard had stolen some of Sam’s best moves, too. But he’d gotten a cousin to _finally_ agree to go back to CUNY, so Sam wasn’t gonna bitch too much. (That was his version, anyway. Clint finally handed him a sports drink and said he should down it now and go shower, because Natasha had muttered something about going to a club where she needed a good dance partner. Whether it was work or pleasure, Sam had better hydrate because she really was going to want to dance. At which point Sam shut up and went to clean up for his date.)

Bruce found that he’d spent half an hour helping with inventory at his favorite tea shop. Clint got a wave from one of his favorite perches in Bed-Stuy and found someone had left a padded yoga mat and a waterproof yoga bag up there. Darcy came by with some papers Jane wanted hand-delivered to Tony and said they were right, she shouldn’t have bought that grey blouse, it made her look like a zombie. More importantly, she’d added, did anyone know if the whatever-it-was was a fetch or a doppelganger?

That question sobered Steve and Bruce up and sent some of the others diving for dictionaries.

The sightings continued for another twelve days, mostly Steve, but the other Avengers and Tower residents too. (The day the paparazzi followed ‘Pepper’ to the subway while Pepper was actually enjoying a quiet exit to DC to argue with politicians led to Tony conceding magic might, on rare, rare occasions, be useful.)

Four weeks and two days after the Doombot exploded, however, the sightings just… stopped.

~ * ~ * ~

Four weeks and four days after the Doombot exploded, Jarvis spoke to Steve in his room at 3:18 AM. “I’m sorry to wake you, Captain, but if you’d look at your television…”

Steve sat up and scrubbed his scalp to wake up, rumpling his hair up out of bedhead and back down into order in the process as his eyes focused on the screen. Jarvis was running an almost instant translation under the feed but it still took Steve a minute to realize what he was seeing. “Wait. Von Doom is saying that he was in Tblisi yesterday? Why is he—”

BBC’s footage cut over to Von Doom announcing his abdication from the throne of Latveria and he was making the statement from his own throne room. (Steve had seen too many manifestos filmed there to mistake that architecture and the furnishings.)

The reporters visible on the edges of the camera shot looked like they were about to explode from questions they didn’t quite dare yell as Von Doom went on to decree that there would be public elections in six months, and someone named Marketa Vlcek would be asked to organize them.

Steve stared at the screen and said quietly, “And now he’s saying he was in Tblisi. Where did he make that statement from?”

“Tblisi. Colonel Rhodes has already emailed me to say the Avengers should stay here rather than get involved in a change of government in another country. He also asks, as a personal favor, that someone – anyone, he said -- go sit on Dr. Richards and ensure he not head to Latveria either.”

Steve nodded. “Right. Out of our folks, Jess is a night owl. For that matter, Ben Grimm will forgive me interrupting his beauty sleep for this.” He pulled out his phone and started putting together a text asking that one of them go keep Reed in NYC -- preferably by explaining the situation to Sue Richards. He was trying to be tactful, given the whole 3:30 in the morning thing, which made him more blunt than usual with Jarvis. “Let me guess: the one in Latveria sparkled.”

Jarvis sounded torn between amused and resigned. “Not only are there sparkles, sir, but someone sent me video footage. From Latveria. When you’re ready, I’ll play it for you.”

Steve hit send and put his phone back on the nightstand. He stretched, yawned, and then said, “Go for it. I think I’m ready.”

He wasn’t, really. It was his younger self again, cocky and smiling with a light in his eyes and a slant to his grin that Steve could recognize even if he was usually on the inside of them. They’d generally presaged Steve getting his clock cleaned in an alley again, too, which made him wince, now. He suddenly had a great deal more sympathy for his mother, Bucky, and a few of the nuns.

On the screen, ‘Steve’ said, “Hey. Just wanted to tell you: Don’t worry, okay? I didn’t kill you or your friends. I’m sure as hell not going to destroy Von Doom either, even if he did want me to kill you, your reputation, or both. Turns out, though? I like doing things where people are actually _happy_ to see me show up.” ‘Steve’ shrugged, that wicked grin never dimming. “Funny. I think making Latverians happy is going to make Viktor Von Doom very _un_happy. Might even destroy his current reputation. That’d be a damn shame, wouldn’t it?”

Steve winced and rubbed his ear, painfully reminded of the time he’d been logical with Sister Margaret Elizabeth in that same tone.

‘Steve’ paused on the recording, one second, two, three… then the edged smile leveled out. He was quieter when he added, “No one else has ever expected me to act like them. Sure as hell no one else was ever happy when I did. Thanks for everything.”

The video went black and Jarvis said carefully, “That’s where it ends, Captain.”

Steve sat there and thought for a few seconds, then had Jarvis replay it twice: once with the sound off, and again with the sound back on. He leaned back against the headboard and turned it over in his head. Politically… it was probably going to end up a mess, but that was not something for the Avengers to handle. Ethically, same comment. Magic? If Doom started to use magic to hold his people down, that was something for Dr. Strange to handle. He’d yell if he wanted help but until then, not a job for the Avengers. So.

Steve sat up and keyed in the password on his phone again. “Feel free to read over my shoulder, Jarvis, but I’m going to tell Rhodey not to worry. This may end up with the UN Peacekeepers, or maybe Steven Strange, but it ain’t our baby.”

Jarvis sounded almost surprised. “I don’t imagine this ‘indecision’ on Von Doom's part will go well in Latveria.”

Steve kept swiping words into the email. “No, it probably won’t. But as long as we don’t end up with more Doombots marching everywhere, we’ll stay out of it, Jarvis. Even if it turns into a civil war, that’s United Nations business, not ours. Not a precedent we’re gonna set,” he added firmly.

“And if Von Doom wishes to revoke his announcement, he will destabilize his own reign through the appearance of madness,” Jarvis agreed. “But he might well say damn the consequences.”

“Yeah, he might,” Steve agreed. “But based on his behavior here, the doppelganger comes across as being a pretty decent human being. He seemed to learn skills _and_ behavior from us. I’d say, let him run his play. Hopefully the nearby countries will stay out of it, other than the usual ‘does Doom really have a twin brother?’ cracks. No one’s dumb enough to say publicly that the dictator with the robots is nuts, but they might get in a hurry to shift power and close him off to do ‘research’ if he keeps contradicting himself. Shut down his shipments of raw materials, say.” Steve shrugged. “We can hope.”

Steve sent Rhodey the same synopsis he’d given Jarvis: United Nations maybe, Strange if magic got involved, but so far not Avengers business from the sounds of it. He plugged his phone back in and yawned, waiting to see if Rhodey was going to call back or just email acknowledgment of the evaluation. He already had intel analysts at work on it; Steve didn’t even have to ask about that.

Jarvis was undoubtedly doing his own calculations and combing for more data. It was still kind of him to wait until Steve finished the email before asking, “Are we taking the doppelganger’s statements at face value, then?”

“We’re fitting them against what we saw, Jarvis. He could look like any of us; he could acquire some of our skills while impersonating us. He could have played hell with our reputations at the least, tied us up in a lot of criminal charges if he’d wanted to. Every report we’ve found, however, says he tried to be a decent person while he looked like us. I don’t know if that last is because he had to – if form caused function – or whether he just figured out he could and he liked it. 

“I do know that’s what he did, though, so yeah. I’m gonna count that on the plus side of his ledger. If he is a doppelganger or a fetch and Von Doom dropped him in the middle of us in a Doombot… well, a mix of science and magic is pretty much Doom’s MO. It’d fit.”

Jarvis hmmed while he thought, then said, “True. The doppelganger did have the sense to wait until Von Doom was out of the country, as well, but do you truly think he has a plan?”

The phone chimed, and Steve raised an apologetic finger before checking what Rhodey had sent back.

It just said, ‘Sanest response I could’ve hoped for. Get some more sleep. Wish I could.’

Steve replied with a coffee emoji and grinned as he told Jarvis, “Oh, yeah. Our guy has a plan. Worse. He’s decided he’s got a goal.”

Jarvis managed not to groan. “Yes. I did recognize the set of his shoulders.” He sounded almost amused as he said, “I’ll start preparing a more diplomatic grade of Mr. Barton’s rather succinct ‘not our circus; not our monkeys’ for the Avengers’ press release then, Captain. Do get some more sleep.”

Steve yawned, pulled the covers back up and grinned. “Gotta say, the idea that Victor Von Doom sent something over here to ruin our reputations and instead it went back to live up to ‘em? It’s a great joke on Doom.”

“Do have sweet dreams about it, then, sir.” Jarvis turned off the television and dimmed the lights again before adding approvingly, “Look at it this way: It’s entirely possible that Dr. Doom has managed to turn loose his own worst nightmare – on himself.”


End file.
